New Delhi, India -- A cursory glance at world news today may suggest that the fault-line where Buddhism and Islam meet in Asia is increasingly characterized by conflict between the two religions. Of course, in broadest sense, this is not true, as religions are made up of numerous individuals and leaders, who are generally of differing opinions.

Yet, there is an unusually high level of tension between Buddhists and Muslims in regions where the two groups share space, including Rakhine state in Myanmar, southern Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Ladakh, the eastern part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
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That looks like a really interesting article, Paul. I'll have to spend some time reading it later. The closing paragraph raises many intriguing questions:

Why is modernity in Indonesia so different from modernity in the West, the Middle East, India and China? Is it possible to live in a pre-axial sacred cosmos while following an axial religion and living within post-axial modern institutional structures? How might Islamicate culture in Indonesia contribute to a more just and peaceful world order in the years ahead? There is indeed a "clash of civilizations" in Indonesia, but it is not between Muslims and the West. Nor is it between Muslims and non-Muslims. Rather, it is between different imaginations of reality that occur within different communities and, as often as not, also within a single human heart.

I like the article you started the thread with, more than the one Paul contributed. The latter makes some interesting suggestions, particularly towards the end, but they don't seem to me to be applicable only to Indonesia, or to Islamic societies. E.g.

According to Donald, theoretic cognition led to the post-axial, secular age of the modern world. In the post-axial age of theoretic cognition, the primary dichotomy is no longer between sacred and profane (pre-axial), transcendent and mundane (axial), but rather between the religious and the secular (post-axial) (cf, Bellah and Joas, eds, 2012). At least in the West, science, verifiable knowledge, public discourse, the marketplace and government all take place in the sphere of the secular, whereas religious beliefs and ethical practices are in the sphere of individual, private beliefs and practices.

That's a change which is still working its way through Australian society, for better and for worse.

I like the article you started the thread with, more than the one Paul contributed. The latter makes some interesting suggestions, particularly towards the end, but they don't seem to me to be applicable only to Indonesia, or to Islamic societies. E.g.

According to Donald, theoretic cognition led to the post-axial, secular age of the modern world. In the post-axial age of theoretic cognition, the primary dichotomy is no longer between sacred and profane (pre-axial), transcendent and mundane (axial), but rather between the religious and the secular (post-axial) (cf, Bellah and Joas, eds, 2012). At least in the West, science, verifiable knowledge, public discourse, the marketplace and government all take place in the sphere of the secular, whereas religious beliefs and ethical practices are in the sphere of individual, private beliefs and practices.

That's a change which is still working its way through Australian society, for better and for worse.

Would you care to expand on that? Do you mean that in societies like Australia/NZ, etc, there is no shared religious experience across the society?

Mike

Various criticisms of Islam removed to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=30627 Anything not addressing the OP will be similarly dispatched....

Hi, Mike,
What I meant was that "religious beliefs and ethical practices" are not entirely "in the sphere of individual, private beliefs and practices" in Aust/NZ but are moving in that direction. What I expect (hope) to see is that rationally justified "ethical practices" remain in the public sphere while religion becomes ever more private - the latter, as you suggest, because the amount of "shared religious experience across the society" is inexorably dwindling because of migration and secularisation.
But that is all OT so I will say no more for fear of banishment.

Thanks, Kim, that's useful input. There are, indeed, challenges in multicultural societies in this area of the world. New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, etc are all working through them in their own way.